Tag Archives: Turn Off

Just Plain Folks Music Awards started in 1999 as a simple way to recognize the best music submitted by members. JPF Founder Brian Austin Whitney felt the music made by the “other 98%” of the music world often ignored by the mainstream televised music awards shows deserved its own recognition.

For the JPF Music Award of 2017 artists from all over the world submitted more than 17.400 music albums and 240K+ songs. No easy job for the jury, who have to nominee the best albums and songs.The judging criteria is based around one basic concept: Does the music move you? Shamall seems to move AGAIN – the double Album “TURN OFF” is nominated 3 times in two categories (Alternative Album Nominees, Alternative Song Nominees and Modern Pop/Rock Song Nominees).

+++ +++ Update:
Actually a 4-CD set was planned, which should reflect the musical development of Shamall from the beginning until today. As 30 years musical work does not fit on 4 CDs because it would draw an incomplete picture of Shamall’s musical history. Some important titles would omit for reasons of physical limitation of a compact disc. Therefore, we have now decided to bring out a CD-Set with 5 discs as a Capbox with the title: Shamall – “History Book”.
The first 4 discs contain not only a selection of remastered earlier works but also some titles of Shamall’s more recent CDs.

The compilation of the “History Book”, which appears exactly 30 years after the release of the 1st Shamall maxi single “My Dream” (1986), traces the musical career of Shamall from his early electronic works to the current progressive / psychedelic rock. The 5th CD contains new music, based on the “Turn Off” theme with unreleased material, early versions and rehearsals. Because of many inquiries from fans we decided to release this 5th disc as a separate digipak with the titel “Shamall – Continuation”.

Both releases are available on JULY, 5th in our Online-Shop.
Please stay tuned for more information.

The Shamall albums offered here are after the band’s transition to progressive rock and so are their highest-rated on Prog Archives: Turn Off (2CD, 2013, digipack), Is This Human Behavior (2CD, 2009, digipack), Questions of Life (2008, digipack), Ambiguous Points of View (2CD, 2006, digibook),Who Do They Think They Are (2CD, 2003, jewel box), and The Book Genesis (2CD, 2001, jewel box). Ambiguous Points of View counts as 1.5 CDs for shipping.

We’re devoting most of this space to the latest album Turn Off, because that’s the one we’ve listened to. It seems that the major influence present on the Shamall albums has been Pink Floyd. But Turn Off sounds much closer to Eloy, themselves Pink Floyd influenced but quite distinct. Shamall doesn’t just sound a little like Eloy here — if you didn’t know any better, you’d think this was a new Eloy album. More specifically, it sounds like Eloy featuring special guest Edgar Froese.

That’s one of the remarkable qualities of this album, how well Tangerine Dream style sequencers and synths are integrated into progressive rock. There are male and female vocals (in English), though the music is heavily instrumental. It turns out that Shamall is primarily the work of one man, Norbert Krueler, but you’d probably never guess. This is one amazing album, perhaps with slightly too narrow a style given its 150-minute length, but you won’t feel shortchanged on this or any of the other Shamall albums. Most are double-CDs, and each disc is nearly full. There is a lot of music here.

Four years after the release of the successful double album “Is this human behavior” Shamall is back now with nearly 160 minutes of great songs full of emotions and finest impressive retro prog.Even after almost 28 years, the 16th Shamall-release “Turn Off” shows no signs of fatigue at all. While Norbert Krueler basically stayed true to his line, the new album has been enriched with the female voice of vocal artist Anke Ullrich. Whether solo or second voice or choir: These female vocals know how to please. Generally the authentic vocals ensure that the music never turned out too sterile. Once again, “Turn Off ” attend to global environmental problems, along the lines, that music is the best medium to provoke thoughts concerning political or ecological issues.

The recent opus “Turn Off” is another proof of Shamall’s reputation as “German Pink Floyd with own influences” because of his energetic, dynamic synthesizers and keyboards. This style of playing convinces with great power and clarity and shouldn’t be listened to in the background. However the whole album does not turn into another Pink Floyd Clone because of the interplay of keyboards with the guitar of Matthias Mehrtens, who has grown up in the era of Steve Vai, but mutated into an independent musical development with many variants and impressive compositions.

Despite more recent musical influences, the spirit of the 70s and 80s is omnipresent.

Sometimes dreamy lifted, sometimes playful and funky, guitars and synthesizers provide always an exciting battle. Like its predecessors, “Turn Off ” is composed of two musical main themes, where vocal passages either finalize or dissolve the arc of suspense. Atmospheric soundscapes, passionately played, arouse curiosity of what comes next.